How Antimatter Got into Science Fiction

[beamjockey]

Did you ever wonder how Jack Williamson came to write a series of science fiction stories about antimatter?

1928 Paul Dirac's relativistic treatment of quantum mechanics shows that the positron may exist.

1932 Carl Anderson discovers the positron in cloud-chamber photographs. Physicists speculate about other anti-particles (what we now call

Comments

[whl]

Ok, now explain why E. E. "Doc" Smith decided to use Platinum waste solution in Skylark of Space.

[stickmaker]

There had been a lot of work done recently (at the time the story was originally written) separating noble metals in the platinum group. Chemists just kept _finding_ new stuff, the closer they looked at platinum, iridium, etc. So, yeah, a logical place to find something new.

[whl]

Kind of like setting the action in Ytterby, Sweden would have similarly established a basis for finding a new element, right.

That makes sense.

[major_clanger]

Thanks for this! I well remember reading Seetee Ship when I was young - i.e. about 40 years after it was written. Ah, the asteroid belt was more fun those days, with great lumps of antimatter floating around. Might have made the end of the NEAR mission more interesting though!

[whthorse]

That's an incredible history Bill. Thanks for bringing it all together. I'd never even thought about the description of a "positronic" brain as something that doesn't really make sense. A head full of anti-matter...there's enough to blow up the ship. And you certainly couldn't go rooting around with a tool to fix it.

[del_c]

If stories like that were being written today, I suppose they'd be set in the Kuiper Belt.

[theengineer]

Great little article!